And Not Me
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: I'm jealous of your cigarette... Hannapocalypse Universe; a oneshot.


_And Not Me_

Somewhere in New England:

Not quite midnight, at just the brink of autumn. Sliver moon. The air was cool as unsheathed metal, and it curled over Doc Worth's shoulders like the delicate talons of a succubus. This he knew from experience.

And a damn fine succubus she'd been, once you got past the alien eyes and the weird boneless movements.

The doctor blew out a breath of blue smoke, twisting eddies like some nightmare creature feeling its way out of another dimension. He snorted. Clearly, he'd been spending unhealthy amounts of time in Hanna's presence, and if he was smart he'd take this as a sign to invest in a pair of earplugs next town they reached.

"This is incredibly boring," Conrad murmured, arms crossed, leaning back against the stone wall.

"An' whatcha expect me ter do about it?"

They were waiting. They had _been_ waiting for an hour, because the man they were waiting for was mysteriously absent and there was nothing for it except to wait, wait, and hope that their masquerade hadn't been unmasked in the last twenty-four hours. Worth could wait. He had plenty of experience with the small, silent hours between fits and bursts of living frenzy. He could wait.

Conrad, apparently, could not.

"You _could_ stop blowing smoke, for one. It's going for me like it's alive or something."

"Princess, y'don even _breathe_."

Conrad made a small noise of infinite irritation. "It's getting in my hair."

"Aw, like you got any room ter complain, with that artificial jizz shit ya used ter put in it."

"_Tell_ me you aren't talking about my hair gel."

"Ya got somethin' else in yer hair that looks like jizz?"

"You are truly foul."

Worth took a deep drag and exhaled maybe an inch from Conrad's face, leaning down close for better aim. The vampire grimaced and twisted his head away, batting at the blue coils breaking across his cheekbone.

"I'll start smelling like you," he complained, although he didn't actually move away.

"Heaven ferbid y'might get mistaken fer one'a us lowly peons, yer ladyship."

Oddly, no reply. A wolf howled faintly on the other side of the forest, in the faint voice of a creature who had just recently remembered what it was like to be the top predator. Worth took another drag on its behalf, and scanned the edges of the trees for the telltale flicker of headlights. He wasn't looking forward to another night wasted on this ploy.

"Give me one of your cigarettes," the younger man said, after a moment.

Worth raised one eyebrow, bemused. "What's th' magic word?"

"Just give me one, asshole."

The doctor went back to smoking, hands in pockets. "'S more than one word, sugar."

The next thing he knew, Worth's arm was pinned to the wall under the weight of Conrad's shoulder and there was a foreign hand shoved into the pocket on the inside of his coat. Goddamn vampire speed. Points for being unexpected, though; maybe princess Connie really was learning.

The doctor stabbed the point of one boney fist into Conrad's sternum, and there was a thick _whump_ as the idiot recoiled so suddenly that he actually fell over backwards. Curses bounced off the stone beside them. Worth grinned, and after a second of contemplation, he dropped down to a crouch over his felled partner.

"Didn't yer mum tell ya that sorta thing don' come till the third date?"

Conrad glared up at him, rubbing at his undoubtedly bruising chest. "That was _completely_ unnecessary. I only wanted a cigarette."

"An' I still ain't heard the magic word."

A sliver of wind cut between them, and carried away the sound of Conrad sighing through his gritted teeth. The hem of Worth's coat draped across the younger man's worn knee.

"Please."

"Like ya mean it, now."

Conrad's head flopped back against the concrete, and he sighed again, this time in defeat. "Please?"

Good enough. Worth reached into his pocket and slipped out the half-empty pack, tapped one free. He was running low again, going to have to do something about that soon. He took the cigarette in two fingers and pressed it against Conrad's mouth, which was truly considerate of him, really. He was a considerate man.

The vampire gave him a slightly weirded out look.

Worth searched his pockets for the lighter—he'd lit his own on autopilot, and hadn't paid attention to where he'd put anything back—and eventually found it in his jeans. A catch and flicker, and then yellow light in the darkness, the faint smell of chemical fire, and Conrad's bright red eyes glinting up at him.

And then the color was gone with the light.

The Doc stood, and offered Conrad a hand up. For the first time that Worth could remember, Conrad took it.

They smoked side by side, in the thin moonlight, shoulder to shoulder—and the early autumn wind twisted toward them like they were the center of some inexplicable gravity. Worth's eyes kept falling back to the ember tip of the fag pressed between the fag's lips, held between two fingers in a self-conscious way that told Worth he'd probably never smoked before in his life. Connie looked like he'd learned it from fucking Audrey Hepburn.

So many possibilities it was almost _too_ easy.

And Worth said nothing.

"What I was thinking," the shorter man said, at last, "was that I'm supposed to be posing as human right? And humans smoke. Nobody ever heard of a smoking vampire."

Worth watched the curling fog around Conrad's mouth as he formed words.

"I probably should have explained that before I went digging around in your pockets," he went on, apologetic, as if the lack of retorts had allowed him to forget what kind of person he was apologizing to. The cigarette returned to its place on the white curve of Conrad's mouth.

In that moment, Worth might have given a lot of things to just go temporarily and summarily blind.

"It actually doesn't taste too bad," Conrad mused, offhand, after a while. "I mean it's not great, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be."

"Huh," Worth replied, a thin rush of relief at finally breaking the blockade in his throat, "well it pro'lly ain't the first time ya said that."

Conrad gave him a deeply suspicious look.

The doctor turned his attention back toward the road. "Am I bein' too subtle? I'm talkin' about blowjobs."

Conrad scowled. "Yeah," he muttered, "see, that's what I was afraid of."

An itch started in the doctor's fingers, and he took deep, heavy drags. One after another.

Worth and his feeling had a long distance relationship. Occasionally they bumped into each other in the supermarket or at dinner parties and they gave each other vague looks and talked about the weather and hoped that someone else would come along and distract them. They accidentally tipped glasses of wine onto other people's shoes in the hopes of starting a fight and disappearing out the back door while the dance floor broke down in a well-choreographed melee.

Currently, Worth was trying not to look at the nametag on Feelings at this evening's surprise meet-and-greet.

Then the sound of a car broke through everything and _Christ_ it was about bloody time.

The truck pulled up to the bridge, parked alongside the stone wall, flashed its headlights over the two men leaned up and waiting. Conrad turned his head so that the light wouldn't catch in his predator's pupils and give away the game. He slunk back a few inches, just out of the beam's reach.

The man who exited the truck was uninteresting, in every way except the weapon at his hip which was definitely worth a second glance. It had that graceful deadly look that the last year and a half had taught the doctor to associate with Unseelie design, and a curling, really-should-be-utterly-impractical tip.

Worth had no doubts that it was the most dangerous thing he'd seen in months.

The stranger nodded to them, and waited, while Worth stubbed out the butt of his smoke on the stone.

"You're my contacts for the grimoires, then?"

"Thass us."

The stranger gave them a careful look. "Your friend there looks a bit pale."

Worth shrugged. "He's my readin' man. I don' pay 'im ter go tanning."

The stranger seemed to accept that, probably because magic nerd types really did have a tendency to look vaguely deadish. It came with the whole _secrets man was not meant to know_ territory.

"Where's the pay?" Worth inquired, cool as you please, glancing towards the truck.

"Books first," their contact snapped.

"Yeah, how abou' _no_."

"Books first, or I'm not unlocking the armory."

Worth and Conrad shared a glance. Conrad nodded, mute, and dug a fold of paper out of his jacket pocket. It flickered slightly in the white light.

"Here," the doctor said, holding it out. "The location where we stored 'em. Figured y' wouldn't want us along, but we'll go with ya if yer worried."

The stranger looked down at the square like it was covered in slime. "You expect me to take your word for it? There could be an ambush waiting for me. I'm a wanted man, you know."

Worth rolled his eyes. "Take it. Look, the address ain't ten minutes walk from here. Gas ain't cheap an' I don't fancy carryin' three massive fuckin' textbooks fulla demon names an' god knows what other shit up two hills an' a bridge. You'd hafta be stupid. Thass all, Jesus Christ. So just calm th' fuck down, Lamont."

"What?" the stranger said, taken aback.

Worth blinked a couple times and waved the paper. "Nothin'. Used ter know a guy. Anyhow, here."

Hesitantly, the man reached out and took the offering—and his eyes flashed white and he tumbled to the ground. There was a crunch that might have been his nose.

"Aw, I really din't expect that ter work. An' we never even got ter use the cover story," Doc Worth noted, a little disappointed. "I like th' part where we met in prison an' you were my bitch."

Conrad bent down and removed the Unseelie blade buckled at the stranger's hip, making quick work of new knots around his wrists. Nothing like good old fashioned rope restraints.

"That was _not_ our cover story," Conrad said, irritated. Which was nothing new. "That was what Casimiro told you when we met up at the Federation council and you got shitfaced drunk. _Our_ cover story was hunters gone mercenary and it in no way involved me being your bitch. At all."

"I know. I thought ya might appreciate the added color."

"At the risk of setting myself up, why in the _world_ would I appreciate that?"

"'Cause it's got that pretty ring'a truth to it, eh? What with us gettin' tossed in prison all the time an' you bein' my bitch."

"Ugh, what is _with _you tonight."

The reply to that one caught in Worth's throat for about a second longer than it should have, just long enough for Hanna to come crashing out of the bushes in a cloud of irritation and dead leaves and make the whole thing irrelevant anyways.

"Guys, you were supposed to _call_ us if he went down with the paper."

"Seem ta seen it fine fer yerself."

"I was _going_ to," Conrad muttered, glaring at his partner. "But this jerk distracted me."

"Aw, distractin' am I? How—"

"_Guys_!" Hanna cut in, a little red in the cheeks. The headlights lit one half of his face up like an artist's model. "We really don't have time for this right now, alright? I got mojo to work and not a lotta time to do it, so it would be super helpful if you'd take whatever it is you do somewhere else, like inside the truck maybe, kay? Also, Conrad, you're still smoking."

Conrad looked down at the burning stub between his teeth like it was a sudden intruder. "Oh. That, uh, I thought—"

Hanna waved him off with the hand that wasn't busy digging through his pockets for a marker. "Yeah, I heard. Believe me, I heard."

Conrad gave him an uncomfortable, nonplussed look. Hanna ignored it. With a sigh and a quick turn, Conrad made his way back towards the truck which now probably qualified as stolen, and the doctor followed on his heels. Away from the blaze of headlights, the night settled around them in thick layers.

"Here," Conrad said, plucking the cigarette from between pale lips. "You can have it. God knows it doesn't do me any good."

He held his hand out, without bothering to glance back, and offered the smoking twist. The little red ember, familiar dark red, glowed between perfectly upkept nails. Worth regarded it in the same way that he might regard an offered snake, or a rag soaked in chloroform.

Conrad turned, when he realized that he was just standing there with his hand outstretched like an awkward mannequin. He made a little gesture of impatience. "Just _take_ it, Worth. I know you want the stupid thing. You stared at it enough."

After a second of wary contemplation, Worth took it.

There was a slight brush of skin, and belatedly Conrad snatched his hand back.

"Well," the vampire said, shifting his gaze. "There. Fuck knows it probably killed you to share."

And then the undead man was gone, disappeared around the back of the truck, most likely to fiddle with the case of armaments that they'd been ostensibly trading for. And Worth was alone. Alone, with the hangnail moon and the gunmetal wind and the faint scents of the forest and of sickly-sweet disappointment.

Looking down at the cigarette, Worth acknowledged belatedly and bitterly that the nametag on Feelings tonight had read "Jealousy", even though you'd have to be an utter fucking retard to be jealous of a smoking paper stick.

Eventually, he brought it up to his lips and took a drag.

And he remembered with an empty-eyed fixation where it had been just breaths before.

-FIN-


End file.
